THE FAMOUS DUELLING PISTOLS
Dick's great-grandfather (Wild Dick Ware, as he used to be called by the
country-side), besides other enormities of indiscretion, committed an
architectural crime. Having begun to form the collection of arms which
was Dick's pride and hobby, he felt the need of a fencing gallery where
they could be displayed to advantage. None of the rooms in the house
were suitable. Building a new wing would cost too much. So, like a good
old English gentleman, accustomed to get what he wanted, he ruthlessly
cut off a slice of the nobly proportioned morning-room, containing a
beautifully-mullioned casement at the side, knocked a French window
through one end, so that he could wander in and out from the terrace,
knocked a door through the other so that it opened on a corner of the
hall, forgot all about the fireplace, and left his descendants to make
the best of things.
This long, narrow, comfortless strip of a room was Dick's armoury, den,
and refuge. It was furnished with extreme simplicity. At the further end
two rusty leather arm-chairs flanked a cast-iron stove in the corner, and
were balanced in the other and darker corner by a knee-hole writing-desk
littered with seeds and bulbs and spurs and bits of fishing tackle, and
equipped for its real purpose with a forbidding-looking pen and inkpot,
and a torn piece of weather-beaten blotting-paper. At about a third of
the way down from the terrace door a great screen, covered with American
cloth, cut the room almost in two. Against this screen stood two suits
of beautifully-finished fifteenth-century Italian armour. Between them
and the further end of the room ran a long deal table, with a green
baize cover. An odd, dilapidated chair or two stood lonely and
disconsolate against the opposite wall. The floor was covered with old
matting and a few faded rugs. The walls, however, and the cases ranged
along them gave an air of distinction to the room. There hung trophies
of arms of all sorts--a bewildering array of spiky stars like the
monstrous decorations on the breast of a Brobdingnagian diplomatist, of
guns and pistols of all ages and nationalities, of halberds, pikes, and
partisans, of curved scimitars, great two-handed swords, and long,
glittering rapiers, with precious hilts. There, too, were coats of chain
mail and great iron gauntlets, and rows of dinted helmets formed a
cornice round the gallery.
It was Dick's sanctuary, where, according to family tradition, he was
supposed to be immune from domestic attacks. Anyone, it is true, could
open the door and worry him from the threshold, but no one entered
without his invitation. Here he was master. Here he spent solitary hours
dreaming dreams, wrestling with devils, tying trout-flies, making up
medicines for his dogs, and polishing and arranging and rearranging his
armour and weapons. Until the furies got hold of him he was a simple
soul, content with simple things. The happiest times of his life had
been passed here among the inanimate objects which he loved, and here he
was now spending the hours of his greatest agony.
The words he had just heard from Austin rang like a crazy, deafening
chime through his ears. He sat in one of the old leather chairs,
gripping his coarse hair. It was unthinkable, and yet it was true.
Viviette had told Austin the thing that glowed sacred at the bottom of
his soul. The scene danced vividly before his eyes: the two bright
creatures making a mock of him and his love, laughing merrily at the
trick they had played him, pitying him contemptuously. There was a flame
at his heart, a burning lump in his throat. Mechanically he drew from a
little cupboard near by a bottle of whiskey, a syphon, and a glass. The
drink he mixed and swallowed contained little soda. It increased the
fire in his heart and throat. He paced the long room in crazy
indignation. Every nerve in his body quivered with a sense of
unforgivable insult and deadly outrage. Austin's face loomed before him
like that of a mocking devil. He had hell in his throat, and again he
tossed down a dose of whiskey, and threw himself into the arm-chair. The
daily paper lay on a stool at his hand. He took it up and tried to read,
but the print swam into thin, black smudges. He dashed the paper to the
ground, and gave himself up to his madness.
After a while he remembered his appointment with Katherine at three
o'clock. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to the hour, and,
beyond a cleaning yesterday afternoon, no preparations were made. In an
automatic way he unlocked some cases and drew out his treasures, wiped
the sword-blades tenderly with chamois leather, and laid them on the
long, baize-covered table. Here and there from the cornice he selected a
helmet. The great mace used by his ecclesiastical ancestor he unhooked
from the wall. Soon the table was covered with weapons, selected in a
dazed way, he knew not why. A helmet fell from his hands on the floor
with a ring of steel. Its visor grinned at him--the fool, the tricked,
the supplanted. He kicked it, with a silly laugh. Then he pulled himself
together, picked it up, and examined it in great fear lest harm should
have happened to it. He put it on the table, and in order to steady his
nerves drank another large whiskey and small soda.
He scanned the table, perplexed. Some accustomed and important exhibit
was not in its place. What was it? He clasped his head in his hands and
strove to clear his mind for a moment from obsession. It was something
historical, something unique, something he had but lately mentioned to
Katherine. Something intimately connected with this very room. At last
memory responded. He placed a chair between the two suits of armour that
stood against the screen and the end of the long table, and, mounting,
took a mahogany case from a shelf. Then he sat on the chair, put the
case on the table, and opened it by means of a small, ornamental key. It
contained a brace of old-fashioned duelling pistols, such as were used
at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They were long-barrelled,
ivory-handled, business-like weapons, provided with miniature ramrods.
The velvet-lined interior of the case was divided into various
compartments, two for the pistols, one for powder-flask, one for
bullets, one for percussion-caps, and one for wads. In his dull,
automatic way, his mind whirling madly in other spheres, he cleaned the
pistols, shook the powder-flask to make certain that powder was still
there--he loved to pour out a few grains into his hand and show the
powder that had remained in the flask for generations, ever since the
pistols were last used--counted the caps, which he had counted many
times before, looked stupidly into the only empty compartment, only to
remember that there never had been any wads, and, finally, grasping one
of the pistols, took aim at a bulb on his writing-desk at the end of
the room.
He had been tricked, and robbed, and mocked. He could see the scene when
she had told Austin. He could hear Austin's pitiless laughter. He could
picture her mimicking his rough speech. He could picture them,
faithless, heartless, looking into each other's eyes.... Suddenly he
passed his hand over his forehead. Was he going mad? Hitherto he had
heard their voices in the dimness of imagination. Now he heard them loud
in vibrating sound. Was it real or imaginary? He drew deep,
panting breaths.
"Dick's not here," said Viviette's voice from the terrace. "He has
forgotten."
"Really, my dear, I don't very much care," Austin replied. "Where you
are, I am happy."
"I wish that telegram would come. It's quite time. Don't you think we
had better tell Dick to-day?"
"No, no. To-morrow."
"After all, what is the good of hiding it from him?"
A laugh from Austin. "You think we ought to put him out of his misery
at once?"
It was real! Those two were talking in flesh and blood on the terrace.
They were talking of him. His misery! That had but one meaning. And the
devil laughed! Unconsciously his grip tightened on the butt of the
pistol. He listened.
"Yes," said Viviette. "It would be kinder."
"I stick to the birthday idea. It would be more dramatic."
"The damned villain!" Dick muttered.
"I want to-day," said Viviette.
"And I want to-morrow."
"You speak as if you were my lord and master," said Viviette, in the
mocking tones Dick knew so well.
"No other man shall be if I can help it."
The clear, young masterful voice rang down the gallery. Dick slid his
chair noiselessly to the side of the screen which hid him from the
terrace-window, and, bending down low, peered round the edge. He saw
them laughing, flushed, silhouetted against the green, distant trees.
Austin was looking at her with the light of passion in his eyes. She
looked up at him, radiant, elusive, triumphant, with parted lips.
"Please to remember we were talking of Dick."
"Confound Dick! In this he doesn't count. I matter. And I'll show you."
He showed her in the one and only way. She struggled for a second in his
arms, and received his kiss with a little laugh. They had moved to the
far lintel of the door. Dick's world reeled red before his eyes. He
stood up and held the pistol pointed. Damn him! Damn him! He would kill
him. Kill him like a dog.
Some reflex motion of the brain prompted action. Feverishly he rammed a
charge of powder down the pistol. Wads? A bit of the newspaper lying on
the floor. Then a bullet. Then a wad rammed home. Then the cap. It was
done at lightning speed. Murder, red, horrible murder blazed in his
soul. Damn him! He would kill him. He started into the middle of the
room, just as they walked away, and he sprang to the door and levelled
the pistol.
Then reaction came. No. Not like a dog. He couldn't shoot his brother
like a dog. His arm fell helplessly at his side. He turned back again
into the room, staggering and knocking himself against the cases by the
walls, like a drunken man. The sweat rolled down his face. He put the
pistol beside the other on the table. For some moments he stood a
hulking statue, shaken as though stricken with earthquake, white-faced,
white-lipped, staring, with crossed, blue eyes, at nothing. At last he
recovered power of motion, drank another whiskey, and replaced bottle,
syphon, and glass in the cupboard.
He found himself suddenly clear-headed, able to think. He was not in
the least degree drunk. To test himself he took up a sword from the
table, and, getting the right spot, balanced it on his finger. He could
speak, too, as well as anybody. He turned to a long Moorish musket
inlaid with gems and mother-of-pearl, and began to describe it. He was
quite fluent and sensible, although his voice sounded remote in his own
ears. He was satisfied. He had his nerves under control. He would go
through the next hour without anyone suspecting the madness that was in
his mind. He was absolutely sober and self-collected. He walked along a
seam of the matting that ran the whole length of the gallery, and did
not deviate from it one hair's breadth. Now he was ready. Perfectly
prepared to deliver his lecture. He sat down and picked up the
newspaper, and the print was clear. "The weather still continues to be
fine over the British Islands. The anti-cyclone has not yet passed away
from the Bay of Biscay...." He read the jargon through to the end. But
it seemed as if it were not he who was reading, but someone else--a
quiet, placid gentleman, deeply versed in the harmless science of
meteorology. Where his real self was he did not know, so he toyed with
the illusion.
A voice broke on his ear, coming, it seemed, from another world.
"Dick, may we come in?"
He rose, saw Katherine, Austin, and Viviette on the threshold. He
invited them to enter, and shook Katherine by the hand, as if he had not
met her for a long time.
Viviette danced down to the table. "Now, Dick, we're all here. Put on
your most learned, and antiquarian mariner. Ladies and gentlemen, I call
on Mr. Richard Ware to deliver his interesting lecture on the ingenious
instruments men have devised for butchering each other."
Dick put his hand to his head in a confused way. His real self was
beginning to merge itself into that of the quiet gentleman, and there
was a curious red mist before his eyes.
"Come on," cried Viviette. "Look at Katherine. Her mouth is watering for
tales of bloodshed."
Dick could not remember his usual starting-point. He stared stupidly at
the table for a moment; then picked up a weapon at random, and made a
great effort.
"This is a Toledo sixteenth-century sword--reported to have belonged to
Cosmo de Medici. You see here the '_palle_,' the Medici emblem. The one
next to it is a sword of the same period, only used by a meaner person.
I should prefer it, if there were any killing to be done."
He described one or two other weapons. Then, glancing over his shoulder
at Austin and Viviette, who were talking in low, confidential tones a
little way off, he stood stock still, and the beads of sweat gathered on
his forehead. Katherine's voice recalled his wandering wits.
"This is a cross-bow, isn't it? The thing the Ancient Mariner shot the
Albatross with."
"A cross-bow," said Dick. "The iron loop at the end was to put one's
foot into when one wanted to load it."
"And this," said Katherine, pointing to a long steel thing with a great
knob adorned with cruel spikes, "is the family mace, I suppose. I've
seen it before, I remember."
"Yes, that's the mace."
"What a blood-thirsty set of people you must have been!"
Austin came up with a laugh. "There's a legend among us that once mother
was left alone in the house and insisted on having this mace near her
bed so as to defend herself against burglars. But why do you leave me to
tell the story, Dick?"
Dick clenched his fists, and, muttering something, turned and ascended
the gallery above the screen. Viviette followed him.
"You're not doing it at all nicely. I don't think you want to."
"Can you wonder at that?" he said hoarsely.
Viviette played deliciously with the fire.
"Why, aren't we intelligent enough for you?" she asked with childish
innocence.
"You know what I mean."
"I haven't the faintest idea. All I know is that you may as well be
polite, at any rate."
He laughed. Ordinarily he had little sense of humour; but now he had the
flames in his heart and the hell in his throat, and red mist before
his eyes.
"Oh, I'll be polite," he growled. "By God, I'll be polite! One may be
suffering the tortures of the damned, but one must smirk and be polite!"
He snatched up the first thing to hand, a helmet that stood on a case,
and brought it down below the screen.
"Katherine, Viviette says I'm not delivering my lecture properly. I beg
your pardon. I'm rather shy at first, but I get warmed up to my subject.
What would you like to hear about?"
Katherine exchanged a glance with Austin.
"Don't you think we might put off the rest till another day?"
"Yes, old chap. Put it off till to-morrow. It's your birthday, you
know."
"Birthday? What's that got to do with it? Who knows what may happen
between then and now? No--no. I'm all right," he cried wildly. "You're
here, and you've got to listen. I'll get into fine form presently.
Look!" he said, pointing to the helmet he was holding. "Here is a
Cromwellian morion. It was picked up by an ancestor at Naseby. It has a
clean cut in it. That's where an honest gentleman's sword found its way
into the knave's skull--the puritanical, priggish, canting knave."
He threw the helmet with a clatter on to the table as if it had been the
knave's canting head. He caught up a weapon.
"This is a partisan. All you had to do when you got it inside a man was
to turn it round a bit, and the wound gaped and tore. This tassel is for
catching the blood and preventing it from greasing the handle. Here's a
beauty," he went on, taking a sword from the row he had laid out for
display, and holding it out for Katherine's inspection. "One of the pets
of the collection. A French duelling sword of the middle of the
eighteenth century." He gave a fencer's flourish. "Responsive to the
hilts, eh? Ah! It must have been good to live in those days, when you
could whip this from your side at a wrong done and have the life of the
man that wronged you. The sweet morning air, the patch of green turf,
shoes off--in shirt and breeches--with the eyes of the man you hate in
front of you, and this glittering, beautiful, snaky thing thirsting for
his heart's blood. And then--"--he stood in tierce, left hand curved,
holding in tense fierceness the eyes of an imaginary opponent--"and then
a little clitter-clatter of steel, and, suddenly--ha!--the blade
disappears up to the hilt, and a great red stain comes on the shirt, and
the man throws up his arms, and falls, and you've killed him. He's dead!
dead! dead! Ha! what a time to live in!"
Katherine uttered a little cry of fear, and grew pale. Viviette clapped
her hands.
"Bravo, Dick!"
"Bravo, Dick!" cried Austin. "Most dramatically done."
"I never knew you were such an actor," said Viviette.
Dick stood panting, his hand on the hilt of the sword, the point on the
floor.
"I really do think I've had enough," said Katherine.
"No, not yet," he said in a thick voice. "I've not shown you half yet.
I've something much more interesting."
"But, Dick--"
Viviette interrupted her. "You must stay. It's only beginning to be
exciting. If you only do the rest as beautifully as you did that, Dick,
I'll stay here all day."
Dick, with a curious outward calm, contrasting with the fury of his mock
encounter, put down the sword and went to the end of the table, where
the case of pistols lay.
"At any rate, I must show you," said he, "the famous duelling pistols."
"They were the very pistols in the duel between his great-grandfather
and Lord Estcombe," said Viviette.
"They've not been used from that day--he killed Lord Estcombe, by the
by--till this. The case is just as it was left. I was going to tell you
the story yesterday."
"I remember," said Katherine, by way of civility. "But Mrs. Ware stopped
you."
She was a mild-natured woman, and the realistic conjuring up of
gore-dripping tassels and bloody shirts upset her, and she desired to
get away. She also saw that Dick was abnormally excited, and suspected
that he had been drinking. Her delicate senses shrank from drunkenness.
"You must tell the story," cried Viviette. "It's so romantic. You like
romantic things, Katherine. The great-grandfather was a Dick Ware
too--Wild Dick Ware they used to call him. Go on, Dick."
Dick paused for a moment. He had a curious, dull, befogged sensation of
being compelled to do things independently of volition. Presently
he spoke.
"It happened in this very room, a hundred years ago. Lord Estcombe and
my great-grandfather were friends--intimate friends from boyhood. Wild
Dick Ware was madly in love with a girl who had more or less become
engaged to him. Now, it came to his knowledge that Lord Estcombe had
been using blackguard means to win away the girl's affections. And one
day they were here"--he moved a pace or two to one side--"just as Austin
and I are now. And the girl over there--"
Viviette, with a gay laugh, took up her position on the spot to which he
pointed.
"Just in this identical place. I know the story--it's lovely!"
"An old Peninsula comrade of Wild Dick Ware's was here too--a man called
Hawkins--"
"Katherine shall be Hawkins," cried Viviette.
"And in his presence," Dick continued, "Wild Dick Ware told the girl
that he was mad for love of her, but that he would not force her choice;
yet one of those two, himself or Lord Estcombe, she must choose, for
good and all. She could not speak for shame or confusion. He said,
'Throw your handkerchief to whichever of us you love.' And they stood
side by side--like this"--he ranged himself by Austin's side--"opposite
the girl."
"And she threw the handkerchief!" cried Viviette.
"Throw yours!" said Dick. He looked at her with fierce intensity beneath
rugged brows; Austin with laughing challenge. She knew that she was the
object of each man's desire, and her sex's triumph thrilled through her
from head to foot. She knew that this jesting choice would have serious
import. For some seconds the three remained stock still. She glanced
flatteringly from one man to the other. Which should she choose? Her
heart beat wildly. Choose one or the other she must. Outside that room
no man lived whom she would marry. Each second strained the situation
further. At last her spirit rose in feminine revolt against the trap
which Dick had set for her, and, with a malicious look, she threw the
handkerchief at Austin's feet. He picked it up and gallantly put it
to his lips.
"In the story," exclaimed Viviette, "she threw it to Lord Estcombe.
Austin is Lord Estcombe."
"And I'm Dick Ware," cried Dick, in a strangled voice. "Wild Dick Ware.
And this is what he did. He dragged the girl out of the room first."
He took Viviette by the arm and roughly thrust her past the screen.
"Then--that case was on the table. And without a word Wild Dick Ware
comes up to Lord Estcombe so--and says, 'Choose.'"
He gripped the pistols by the barrels, crossed them, and presented the
butts to Austin. Austin waved them away with a deprecatory gesture and
a smile.
"Really, old man, I can't enter into the spirit of it, like that. You're
splendid. But if I took a hand, it would be tomfoolery."
"Oh, do, do," cried Viviette. "Let us go through with it and see just
how the duel was fought. It will be thrilling. You'll have to fall dead
like Lord Estcombe, and I'll burst into the room and tear my hair over
your poor corpse. Do, Austin, for my sake."
He yielded. Any foolishness for her sake. He took a pistol.
"You'll have to be Major Hawkins, Katherine," he said lightly, as if
inviting her to condescend to some child's game.
But Katherine put her hands before her face and shrank back. "No, no,
no. I couldn't. I don't like it."
"Then I'll be Major Hawkins," said Viviette.
"You will?" Dick laughed harshly. "Then be it so."
"I know just what they did."
She placed the men back to back, so that Austin faced the further end of
the room and Dick the open French window. They were to take three paces,
count one, two, three, and, at the end of the third pace, they were to
turn and fire.
Dick felt the touch of Austin's shoulder against his, and the flame at
his heart grew fiercer and the hell in his throat more burning, and the
universe whirled round in a red mist. Viviette moved to the
weapon-laden table.
"Now. One--two--three!"
[Illustration: Dick glared at him]
They paced and turned. Dick levelled his pistol instantly at Austin,
with murderous hate in his eyes, and drew the trigger. The pistol
clicked harmlessly. Austin, self-conscious, did not raise his pistol.
But Dick, broadening his chest, glared at him and shouted,
wildly, madly:
"Fire, damn you! Fire! Why the devil don't you fire?"
The cry was real, vibrant with fury and despair. Austin looked at him
for an amazed moment; then, throwing his pistol on to one of the
arm-chairs, he came up to him.
"What fool's game are you playing, Dick? Are you drunk?"
Katherine, with a low cry, flung herself between them, and, clinging to
Dick's arm, took the pistol from his hand.
"No more of this--no more. The duel has been too much like reality
already."
Dick staggered to a straight-backed chair by the wall, and, sitting
down, wiped his forehead. He had grown deathly white. The flames had
been suddenly quenched within him, and he felt cold and sick. Viviette,
in alarm, ran to his side. What was the matter? Was he faint? Let her
take him into the fresh air. Austin came up. But at his approach Dick
rose and shrank away, glancing at him furtively out of bloodshot eyes.
"Yes. The heat has oppressed me. I'm not well. I'll go out."
He stumbled blindly towards the French window. Viviette followed him,
but he turned on her rudely and thrust her back.
"I'm not well, I tell you. I don't want your help. Let me alone."
He passed through the French window on to the terrace. The sky had
clouded over, and a drizzle had begun to fall.
Viviette felt curiously frightened, but she put on an air of bravado as
she came down the gallery.
"Have you all been rehearsing this little comedy?"
No mirthful response lit either face. She read condemnation in both
pairs of eyes. For the first time in her life she felt daunted,
humiliated. She knew nothing more beyond the fact that in deliberate
coquetry she had pitted brother against brother, and that something
cruel and tragical had happened for which she was being judged. Neither
spoke. She summoned her outer dignity, tossed her pretty head, and went
out by the end door which Austin in cold politeness held open for her.
Then she mounted to her bedroom, and, throwing herself on her bed, burst
into a passion of meaningless weeping.
Katherine handed Austin the pistol which she had taken from Dick's hand.
"Now you'll believe what I told you."
"I believe it," said Austin gravely.
"That duel was not all play-acting."
"That," said he, "was absurd. Dick Has been drinking. It was a silly
farce. Viviette egged him on until he seemed to take it seriously."
"He did take it seriously, Austin. He's in a dangerous mood. If I were
you I should be careful. Take a woman's warning."
He stood for a moment in deep thought, his gaze absently fixed on the
weapon he held in his hand. Suddenly a glint of something strange caught
his eye. He started, but recovered himself quickly.
"I'll take your warning, Katherine. Here's my hand upon it."
A moment later, when he was alone, he uncocked the pistol--Dick's
pistol. The glint had not been imaginary. It was a percussion cap. With
trembling fingers he picked it off the nipple. He passed his hand across
his damp forehead, for he felt faint with dread. But the task had to be
accomplished. He unscrewed the ramrod and picked out the wad, a piece
of white paper which dropped on the floor. From the barrel held downward
a bullet dropped with a dead, fateful thud on the floor. More paper
wad--a slithering shower of gunpowder. He put the pistol down, and took
up the one he himself had used from the chair where he had thrown it. It
was unloaded. His eye fell on the bits of white paper. He picked them up
and unfolded them. The daily newspaper lay by the stove, with the corner
torn accusingly.
Then he understood. He sank into a chair, paralysed with horror. It was
Dick's pistol that was loaded. Dick had meant to murder him. By the
grace of God the pistol had missed fire. But Dick, his own brother, had
meant to murder him. An hour later he walked out of the room, the case
of pistols under his arm, with the drawn face of an old man.
It was not until Dick had stumbled five or six miles through the
drenching downpour that the thought reached his dulled brain that he had
left the pistols loose for anyone to examine. The thought was like a
great stone hitting him on the side of the head. He turned and began to
run homewards, like a hunted man in desperate flight.